What is free software?

Free software is software that respects our freedom. To use
free software is to make a political and ethical choice asserting
our rights to learn and to share what we learn with others.

Usually software we buy denies us these rights, because we
don't actually buy ownership of the software. Instead, we receive
a license to use the software, and this license binds us with
many fine-print rules about what we can and can't do.

If we make a copy and give it to a friend, if we try to figure
out how the program works, if we put a copy on more than one of
our own computers in our own home, we could if caught be fined or
put in jail. That's what's in the fine print.

What if there were a worldwide group of talented ethical
programmers voluntarily committed to the idea of writing and
sharing software with each other and with anyone else who agreed
to share alike? What if anyone could be a part of and benefit
from this community even without knowing anything about
programming? We wouldn't have to worry about getting caught
copying a useful program for our friends—because we wouldn't be
doing anything illegal.

The free software movement

In fact, such a movement exists, and you can be a part of
it. The free software movement was started in 1984 by Richard
M. Stallman, when he launched a project called GNU, which stands
for ``GNU's Not UNIX'', to provide a replacement for the UNIX
operating system—a replacement that would respect the freedoms
of those using it. Then in 1985, Stallman started the Free
Software Foundation, a nonprofit with the mission of advocating
and educating on behalf of computer users around the world.

Today the number of people who are not computer users is dwindling all the
time, as technology seeps around the globe. It takes knowledge to make this
technology work. People who hoard this knowledge, punishing and threatening
others who try to obtain and share it, are not doing so in order to preserve
it, despite what they may claim. Instead, they are preserving power for
themselves at the expense of others' freedom.

Recognizing this, millions of people around the
world—including entire governments—have made the commitment
to use only free software on their computers. The fact that so
many people are willing to make and stand by this decision in the
face of cheaper and cheaper ``deals'' from Microsoft, Apple and
other proprietary software companies proves these companies
wrong—we don't need them or their fine print to make
software.

Because the copyright laws covering software are often used to
take away our freedoms, Stallman and the FSF developed a specific
legal document called the GNU General Public License (GPL) to
protect them. Instead of restricting what we can do with software
the GPL encourages us to learn and share, so it is called a
``copyleft'' license. Thousands of people and businesses—from
hobbyists to big companies like IBM and Novell—are now
authoring and distributing free software using the GPL.

But which software to use is a political choice for all of us, not just the
people who program and sell it. We can click our freedoms away by signaling
Ok in the Microsoft or Macintosh window after squinting through their
thirty pages of restrictions, or we can click Cancel, and see instead if
there is a piece of free software that does what we need.

We should click Cancel when we can because that's the
more ethical choice. This means we'll have to learn a new
program, and sometimes the free program might not work as
well. The ethical choice is not always the easy choice.

Get involved!

You can start by making a commitment to look for free software
alternatives. The Free
Software Directory lists over 5,000 free programs.

There are many other ways for people with and without programming
skills to help the free software movement continue to
succeed. Please see the websites of the Free Software
Foundation and the GNU
project, to find out how.

And of course, please make copies of this information and share it with
others!